Opened 17 years ago

Closed 14 years ago

#6739 closed (fixed)

How to add symbolic links in Windows Vista

Reported by: kwill Owned by: nobody
Component: Documentation Version: dev
Severity: Keywords: windows vista symbolic link installation development version svn
Cc: Triage Stage: Accepted
Has patch: no Needs documentation: no
Needs tests: no Patch needs improvement: no
Easy pickings: no UI/UX: no

Description

On: ​http://www.djangoproject.com/documentation/install/

Section: Installing the development version

Point: 3. Next, make sure that the Python interpreter can load Django’s code.

A symbolic link can also be created in Windows Vista using the mklink command from the command prompt. Assuming the Python site-packages folder is at C:\Python25\Lib\site-packages and the trunk SVN is at d:\code\django-trunk, this can be done as follows:

  1. Open command line window in Administrator mode
  1. Go to site-packages directory (in our example C:\Python25\Lib\site-packages)
  1. Execute mklink /d django d:\code\django-trunk\django
  1. The output should appear as follows: 
C:\Python25\Lib\site-packages>mklink /d django d:\code\django-trunk\django
symbolic link created for django <<===>> d:\code\django-trunk\django

C:\Python25\Lib\site-packages>dir
 Volume in drive C is SYSTEM
 Volume Serial Number is D038-E46A

 Directory of C:\Python25\Lib\site-packages

2008/03/09  11:03 AM    <SYMLINKD>     django [d:\code\django-trunk\django]
(plus more folders in site-packages)

Attachments (2)

tweak-install.diff​ (2.4 KB ) - added by Adam Vandenberg 14 years ago.
Attempt at tweaking the install doc a bit.
6739.diff​ (5.1 KB ) - added by Chris Beaven 14 years ago.

Download all attachments as: .zip

Change History (7)

comment:1 by Jacob, 17 years ago

Triage Stage: Unreviewed → Accepted

comment:2 by Adam Vandenberg, 14 years ago

mklink is available in Vista and later, but is not without problems. Share a folder containing links and then hit it with clients running XP, for instance. The Python docs ( ​http://docs.python.org/using/windows.html#finding-modules ) don't mention using mklinks on Windows either, so it is perhaps better to adhere to the tradition of installing directly into site-packages, using a .pth file, or adding a new folder to the PYTHONPATH, rather than suggest using mklinks.

comment:3 by Chris Beaven, 14 years ago

Alternatively, I think the docs should just recommend creating a .pth file, as mentioned here: ​http://docs.python.org/install/index.html#modifying-python-s-search-path

comment:4 by Chris Beaven, 14 years ago

And by "alternatively", I mean that I didn't read the whole of adamv's comment before replying. But yeah, my vote's for .pth

by Adam Vandenberg, 14 years ago

Attachment: tweak-install.diff​ added

Attempt at tweaking the install doc a bit.

by Chris Beaven, 14 years ago

Attachment: 6739.diff​ added

comment:5 by Chris Beaven, 14 years ago

Resolution: → fixed
Status: new → closed

(In [14686]) Fixes #6739 -- better development installation docs. Thanks to Adam Vandenberg for inspiration.

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